Firefighters, Lake Worth Reach Pact

October 8, 1987|By FRED LOWERY, Staff Writer

LAKE WORTH -- After bargaining since early July, negotiators for the city and the local firefighters union reached final agreement on Wednesday on a three-year contract that provides the first substantial raises in three years.

While it still must be ratified by the 33 members of the union and by city commissioners, the new pact calls for combined wage increases and reductions in work hours that, in some cases, average out to a 43 percent increase in annual pay.

Under the contract, firefighters will receive 11 percent raises, and driver- engineers will get an 18.4 percent increase this year. Next year, everyone will receive $1,000 across the board. In the third year, firefighter salaries will be raised 7 percent and driver-engineers 8 percent.

``And no longer will they have the longest work week in the State of Florida,`` firefighter attorney Rand Hoch said, noting that the agreement calls for weekly hours to be reduced from 56 to 48 in the second year of the contract.

Even so, Hoch said, the union is not completely satisfied and plans to go ahead with an unfair-labor-practices complaint unless city commissioners make the contract retroactive to Oct. 1.

``They`ve given us no reason to retract it,`` said Hoch of the complaint, which was originally filed with the state Public Employees Relations Commission last month.

``He`s blowing smoke, trying to get a week`s back pay,`` said city negotiations attorney Mike Whelan. ``The gist of the complaint is that we were not bargaining in good faith. We have a contract, so we couldn`t have been bargaining in bad faith.``

Refusing to grant retroactivity, even for so short a time, is a long-standing city policy, Whelan said. ``It`s one of our bargaining tools. The commission has held firm on (not granting retroactivity) for several years.``

Both sides, however, said the contract is fair, although firefighters said they still have a list of requests they will push for when negotiations begin again in 1990.

The success of this year`s negotiations, however, was in doubt until the final bargaining session on Wednesday. Firefighters and the city were still $1,000 from agreement over salaries. That was the difference between the $20,000 the city had offered as a starting wage and the $21,000 the union wanted.

A last-minute compromise was reached that gives so-called ``veteran rookies`` -- firefighters with six months to a year`s experience -- an additional $500 raise.

``We didn`t feel it would be fair for someone to come in and start out making the same thing as somebody who had been with the department for, say, nine months,`` Hoch said.

While giving substantial raises, the new contract only brings the department up to ``the top of the bottom`` in comparative rankings with salaries in other Palm Beach County departments, said union President Tom Maxwell.

``We will still have people leaving for other departments and more money,`` Maxwell said, saying the three-year gap between raises had put the department in the hole.

``Two years ago we agreed to no raises so the city could get us the equipment we needed, and they told us they would make it up the next year,`` Maxwell said. ``Then last year all we got was a zero to 4 percent merit raise, and not nearly everybody got the 4 percent.``

Aside from salaries, Hoch said provisions for drug and alcohol abuse programs that stress rehabilitation rather than punishment and the addition of guarantees in health protection were progressive moves for the city.

The contract, he noted, provides for up to $250 per employee for an AIDS vaccine, should one be developed; and the presumption, for Workers` Compensation purposes, that if an employee contracts AIDS, meningitis or hepatitis, it was contracted in the line of duty.